Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Homeless Terms To Know - Frequent User

A "frequent user" is a homeless person who makes excessive use of community services. His addictions and/or mental health issues are so extreme that he spends an inordinate amount of time in jail, and the cops are often called to deal with him, and he makes several trips to the hospital and its emergency room.

At first, HUD labeled these people "chronically homeless" but that label was inadequate. There are many chronically homeless people who are not frequent users and some frequent users are not actually chronically homeless.

Learning about homelessness and it's many forms and variants requires some time. But the government is now taking the time to learn these things. They will make mistakes, certainly, but with each new discovery they will learn more, and their knowledge of homelessness will become more accurate and thus more productive.

At first, HUD was focused on eliminating Chronic Homelessness. And you'll still hear that term kicked around a lot. But what they are really doing is attempting to determine who the frequent users are, then they'll work to get them off the streets, so to save communities a significant amount of money.

What will happen to all the other chronically homeless people once the frequent users are off the street? Will the government still be motivated to get the remaining chronically homeless off the streets? Or will those people be abandoned once again, because they don't really cost communities much money?